Established in 2009, Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch of Roman and Williams has been churning out tenacious restaurant designs in The Big Apple and beyond. Strong believers that architecture and design should be substantial and meaningful, not precious or arbitrary, the duo met while working in Hollywood as production designers and art directors where they designed more than 20 films, creating elaborate and historically inspired sets. Standefer was even handpicked by film director Martin Scorsese to be the visual consultant for several of his films. Take a peep at three of our favorite eatery designs from the multidisciplinary team after the jump.

Chloe Aftel is an editorial photographer and an old school polaroid artist, and she's lovely enough to teach you how to work that old look (sans Instagram filter) too. It's the Impossible Project workshop, which focuses only on impossible project film and none of the older, expired stocks. Usually you can only find out about it through her email list or Tumblr, where you can find out when the next one is and how you can get on the list. The class is on how to use impossible film and how to find a way to work with models that gets the emotional reaction you want in shots. It's a three-hour intensive with a small group. She has two models who each person has time to work with and they go over the film and how to use it extensively. Aftel teaches how to work with the film, from seeing how it handles light and how you want push or play with it, to the basics like how to use your flash and what it means that different films shoot at different speeds. Her favorite film to use is from the impossible project but she also uses expired 35mm and 120 mm film.

The two models, each one for an hour, are also there to help people understand how to talk to models and direct them in order to get the emotion you want out the image. "You want your subjects to trust you, but you don't want a flaccid image, so you have to figure out how to interact with the talent to get what you want. And more over, you have to have an idea of what that is."

On Dwell's Facebook page we recently posed the question of "Is your kitchen style more charmingly colorful or rustic modern?" and your answers were overwhelmingly on the side of rustic modern. On that note, here are our top ten examples of rustic modern done right.